The industry trend has been to continuously increase the number of electronic components inside computing systems. Unfortunately, while the number of these components is increased, the foot print of these systems remains the same or is even reduced. This is because installation, transportation and storage issues of the consumers have to be addressed. Lighter, and more compact systems are often more attractive to potential consumers. Unfortunately, storing many components in a tight footprint, despite its many advantages, also creates challenges for the designer of these systems. Moreover, while increasing the components inside a simple computing system does create some challenges, such an increase in larger more sophisticated system environments create even greater problems.
A particularly challenging area for the designers of these systems is the issue of resolving electromagnetic interference (“EMI”). Every device or component emits a certain amount of electromagnetic radiation, also referred to as electromagnetic leakage. However, as the number of components is increased, electromagnetic leakage concerns continue to grow. In larger system environments, where the components are packaged in close proximity to one another, the increased number of components and the system footprint greatly increases the EMI concerns since the leakage from one device can greatly affect the proper function of a close by component.
Consequently, unresolved EMI leakage can affect system performance, data integrity and speed of the entire system environment. This is because while such effects can be tolerated when few devices and components exist, the increasing number of components and devices can seriously impact system integrity and performance. In addition, many recent semiconductor devices that operates at higher speeds, cause even greater electromagnetic emission in higher frequency bands where interference is more likely to occur. Therefore a need exists to overcome these problems.